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Focusing on Sylvia Plath's act of graphia on The Bell Jar, the
present thesis aims to explore the intricacies underlying the
"re-presentation" of lost memory. By writing The Bell Jar,
Plath attempted to picture her amnesiac period of life. In
other words, with re-ordered memory of words, Plath sought to
reconstruct her lost memory by projecting it onto a
fictionalized world. The dialectic relationship between
graphia (writing) and agraphia (loss of memory of words)
renders such "representation" of loss of memory questionable.
As the loss of memory indicates a period during which one is
unable to retain memory, re-ordering and recording lost memory,
therefore, entail intermixture of fiction with reality. Such
intermixture unveils the rupture of memory. Moreover, each
exertion of recollection unavoidably erases, reshapes,
appropriates, re-interprets prior retention. Therefore, there
is no tracing back to memory "in the original," for memory is
self-subversive. Also, as the act of writing establishes upon
re-viewing memory, graphia in itself constitutes rupture of
memory. The rupture of memory affiliates Plath's graphia with
Duras's work in which "blanks" are inherent. Where blanks
surface indicates lack, eclipses of senses, and even
forgetting. Such relevance of them further enables us to
explore the rupture of memory in relation to l' criture f
minine and herstory. Also, Modernist Literature articulated a
zealous will, which was also a common textual strategy, to
rupture with tradition. Hence, rupture of memory dissolves the
conception of oneness; it further renders the polyphonic nature
and free play of textuality inevitable.
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